Monday, February 9, 2015

I'm writing this entry because I've been asked the same question at events and on the internet too many times: "Which one to use, flask vs web.py?" I'm also doing this to clarify my reasons on why I like Flask better than web.py.

Disclaimer: this is more of an personal opinion rather than a more true technical comparison.

Flask and Web.py are these Python micro-architectures for building web sites and applications. Django is also a Python framework for building websites but it's whale huge so Django is out.

Age
The age of the framework matters because it helps you "find stuff" for it; find stuff, I mean like StackOverflow pages, blog entries, github projects and such. Also it makes for a good chance that someone already has solved your problem and was good enough to post it somewhere on the web.

Web.py is older and Flask is a bit more recent.

I like new.

Code-wise
Programmers and coders eventually develop a particular "taste" on how to write or organize code. This is another bias of mine because I prefer how Flask's code looks vs Web.py's.

I still like Flask.In the end
Personally, I think the question is relatively moot since both micro-frameworks do roughly the same thing. Although, web.py is older it is still actively developed and it's community is still ticking. Flask is newer but it's still a bit rough around the edges.

Monday, January 26, 2015

Bootstrap is a godsend to single developers who suck at design. It had everything from components to simple animations for that eye candy.

And then things messy when that developer finds "themes" for bootstrap like the free ones over that bootswatch or the high-end stuff over at wrapbootstrap. I'm not saying these things are bad but all to often developers don't have the "design disciple" to use these themes. As developers, we have this tendency to use all the features, colors, suggested layout, etc.; user experience not withstanding. I'm guilty of this. We end up with this "soup" of a website or web app that's full of fancy animations and inconsistent visual design.

I think the fix for this is a set of guidelines that developers can happily follow and this is where patternfly comes in. Pattenfly is built on bootstrap so developers already using bootstrap will have no problem using it.

The nice things with Patternfly:

No more trawling the net for lay-outing advice (https://www.patternfly.org/wikis/layout-templates/)